Why Do I Like the Chicago Bears this Week? 

I.

Always.

Like.

THE.

Chicago.

Bears.

No Style Points Needed

For some time, the evaluative process, especially at coach and quarterback, has been more important than the final score. Not Sunday.

How Sunday looks doesn’t matter. Cleveland likes to play ugly football. Chicago likes to play ugly football. This is going to be an ugly football game. But if the Bears exit Cleveland Browns Stadium having scored more points than the building’s namesake, the entire tone of this season changes. If the Bears can get to 6-8 Sunday, they will achieve three things: (a) their first three-game win streak in years, (b) entrenchment in the wildcard discussion, and (c) one of the most impressive in-season turnarounds from any head coach in recent memory.

One could argue the Bears don’t belong in that playoff discussion but that is obviously false at this stage. The Bears don’t belong in the conversation with San Francisco or Dallas, and even this damaged Philly has earned respect. But after those three, there is a mess of mediocrity in the conference and the Bears are part of that mediocrity. They’ve dominated the Lions for 7.5 of 8 quarters. They’ve beaten Minnesota. They had 11 chances to beat the Saints with their backup quarterback. Green Bay lost to Tommy DeVito on Monday night. There is no gap between these teams. If the Bears didn’t blow those two absurd leads, they’d be betting favorites to make the tournament.

This has been a wild season, but the Browns are the last team on the 2023 schedule with a winning record. If the Bears want to make their fans believe a serious season is still possible, a win on Sunday is all it will take. No style points needed.

Six Thoughts on Home Alone 2

It is quite possibly the strangest film ever made. Here are some reasons why.

• I’ll start with the pigeon woman, played valiantly by the great Brenda Fricker. This is a woman who tells Kevin she was dumped by a guy and her response to that was…to go be a homeless pigeon lady in Central Park? This guy says, “Sorry, honey, I don’t love you” and her response is, “Ah, shit, I guess it’s pigeons for me, then?”
• More pigeon. How does she have access to the prop room at Carnegie Hall? How does she get up there? Is there a separate entrance? Does she always have access to that space? And if so, why doesn’t she just live there and not in the park with pigeons?
• What is Tim Curry’s end game with Kevin? Does he think Kevin will go to jail? He’s a child. Why wouldn’t he just alert a police officer and say, “Hey, I think this kid is in some kind of a trouble. Can you check it out?” It’s not a La Quinta at the side of a highway. It’s The Plaza.
• Kevin knows exactly what time The Sticky Bandits are going to rob Duncan’s. Why does he break the window and then lead them into another torture maze? Just go tell any cop on the street, “Hey, these guys are robbing that store. And they broke out of jail.” As twisted as Kevin reveals himself to be in the first film, he is clearly showing the signs of a future serial killer in the second film.
• So, Kevin wrongly boards a plane from Chicago to New York and doesn’t notice in three hours that none of his 47 family members are on the plane. Then he disembarks at an airport that has a clear view of the skyline; an airport that does not exist in New York. And then his instincts are, “I’m going to hang in NYC for a bit” instead of just telling an airline official, “Hey, I got on the wrong plane. We were supposed to go to Florida. Should I just sit here while this gets sorted?”
• Have you ever walked into a single room and confused the conversation on a television set with the conversation of actual human beings in that room?

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Why Do I Like the Chicago Bears This Week?

I.

Always.

Like.

THE.

Chicago.

Bears.

Justin Fields. End of Story.

The Carolina Panthers are going to earn one of the top two picks in the 2024 NFL Draft. And that means – if you believe what has been written about this coming draft class – the Chicago Bears will be able to select one of the two “elite quarterback prospects” at the top of the draft: Caleb Williams or Drake Maye. And right now, it would be near impossible to see Ryan Poles passing on the position.

Justin Fields has five weeks to change that narrative.

Do you want to know what the league, at least those I know around the league, think about the situation? I sent two texts to individuals with other teams this week. Both texts were identical: “Do you think the Bears will pass on a QB and keep Fields?”

Response 1. “No.”

Response 2. “I think they might.”

I find it hard to believe the Bears have not already made their decision on Justin Fields, but if that’s the case, there’s very little left to watch over the remaining five games. So, let’s operate under the hypothetical that a verdict has yet to be reached. That creates a lovely bit of drama around the quarterback as we head into the new year.

My Ten Favorite Film Discoveries of 2023

One thing that becomes incredibly apparent as you engage any academic discipline, whether that be film studies or molecular biology, is that it’s incredibly difficult to know EVERYTHING. Every time I rewatch the films in my areas of expertise – All That Jazz, Umbrellas of Cherbourg, 12 Angry Men, etc. – there’s another film slipping through the cracks.

I didn’t see enough of the films of 2023 to compile a coherent list. But I did see about 100 films this year I had not previously seen. These were the ten most memorable for me.

Leningrad Cowboys Go America (Aki Kaurismaki, 1989). The Blues Brothers directed by Werner Herzog. On Criterion Channel.

A Moment of Innocence (Mohsen Makhmalbaf, 1996). Stands with Abbas Kiarostami’s Close-Up as the most remarkable cinematic achievements of post-revolutionary Iran. Rentable on Vimeo.

The Secret in Their Eyes (Juan Jose Campanella, 2009). The Academy Award-winning Argentine masterpiece. On Prime.

The Cancer Journals Revisited (Lana Lin, 2018). A harrowing, beautiful salute to Audre Lorde and survival. On Kanopy.

Woyzeck (Werner Herzog, 1979). The unsung collaboration of Herzog and Kinski. It is on this list because I spent months working with it and have grown to love every frame. On Kanopy.

Killers of the Flower Moon (Martin Scorsese, 2023). There will be time, years, to write about this film. For now, I just encourage everyone to see it.

The Murderers are Among Us (Wolfgang Staudte, 1946). The most essential of the German “rubble films.” On Kanopy.

Rush to Judgment (Emile de Antonio, 1967). Emile de Antonio’s and Mark Lane’s stirring indictment of the Warren Commission’s conclusions. It is currently unavailable for home consumption.

The China Syndrome (James Bridges, 1979). One of the great 1970s American paranoia pictures, putting it in a corpus that includes The Parallax View, Three Days of the Condor, Marathon Man, etc. Rentable everywhere.

Deadline at Dawn (Harold Clurman, 1946). The only cinematic work of Group Theater founder Harold Clurman, Dawn is a brilliant example of post-war feminist noir. Sadly, it’s also impossible to find if you’re not studying cinema at the university level or above.

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(1) What do we make of Matt Eberflus’ defensive success? The Bears are now 9th in yards allowed per game, with the game’s best rush defense. The addition of Montez Sweat has dramatically improved their pass rush, seeing sack and interception totals rise. Eberflus has been a net-minus as a head coach, but he’s been a net-plus as the defensive coordinator, with only the late-game collapses against Denver and Detroit marring his 2023 record. This defensive program is clearly working. Will continued success over the final five games be enough for him to keep his job?

(2) What about the availability of high-profile offensive minds? Frank Reich, a terrific OC with clear ties to Eberflus, is now available. Josh McDaniels, a bad head coach but good OC, is now available. Eric Bienemy will be available (and should be in demand as a head coaching candidate) come January. Could Eberflus sell the front office on his defensive success with a retooled offensive structure?

(3) Is the quarterback’s tenure in Chicago officially over? If the season ended Monday night, that answer would surely be yes; the lack of week-to-week consistency would not prohibit the Bears from using one of their high draft picks on a quarterback prospect. Fields has ability; he is a brilliant runner capable of making dynamic plays off-script. But if you listened to Troy Aikman on Monday night, you heard an analyst incredibly skeptical of Fields’ ability to play the position from the pocket. Folks in the building share that skepticism.

(4) Where will the Carolina pick land? The Bears don’t have a particularly good team left on their schedule. It is likely they finish 2-3 or 3-2 over the final five, with the latter moving their own draft pick outside the top ten. Carolina’s finish will play an important role in the composition of the 2024 roster. If they finish with a top two pick, it feels a sure thing that the Bears hit restart at the quarterback position. But what if Carolina win a few games down the stretch and that pick falls outside the Caleb Williams/Drake Maye realm? (Side note: I’ll be rooting for the Bears to take Drake because then we can call him The Hotel.)

(5) How much money are the drops costing Jaylon Johnson? If Johnson could catch, he would be a pick-six machine, and those drops are the only thing preventing him from entering the “best corner in the league” conversation. Eddie Jackson’s career is over, but the Bears have productive young players throughout their secondary. Poles should just suck it up and Johnson what he wants to avoid the tag ballet that follows situations like this. The dropped pick sixes have actually rendered Johnson cheaper than he should be.

Why Do I Like the Chicago Bears this Week?

I.

Always.

Like.

THE.

Chicago.

Bears.

Contextualizing 3-8 (It’s About the Head Coach)

Should the Bears have beaten the Broncos? Yes. They didn’t, because of the head coach.

Should the Bears have beaten the Lions? Yes. They didn’t, because of the head coach.

Mediocre work on the sidelines would have the Bears 5-6 this season, which is exactly where most of us believed they would be at the Thanksgiving holiday. But the coaching, specifically the work from head coach Matt Eberflus, is the reason the Bears are (well) behind their 2023 targets/expectations.

Will Justin Fields be the starting quarterback in 2024? Who knows, but clearly his performance against the Lions last week made some of his more vocal critics, including myself, leave that door slightly ajar. Personally, I just don’t care anymore. Bring him back, don’t bring him back, whatever. I think Fields is good enough to win games but not good enough to be the reason you win a championship. But Josh Allen can’t even get to an AFC Championship Game while Brock Purdy is throwing up perfect quarterback ratings in blowout victories…so maybe there’s no rhyme or reason to any of it. I mean, would you rather have Fields or Jared Goff? I think I prefer Fields.

But Eberflus is never going to be a top head coach. That’s apparent on the sidelines almost every week. If the ceiling for Fields is “not the reason you win a championship,” the ceiling for Eberflus is .500.

The Christmas Movie Guide

This year, I’m going with ten films. Ten films only. I’ll be watching more than 40 Christmas movies over the next month, but it is time to make the difficult choices. It is hard to leave off films like Santa Claus the Movie and Jingle All the Way and Christmas with the Kranks and Noelle. It was not hard to leave off films I simply don’t like, including the perennial downer It’s a Wonderful Life and the wildly overrated A Christmas Story.

Three films worth noting here.

• Klaus is slowly climbing into my top ten and would probably sit 11th currently.
• While I believe White Christmas is a wonderful movie, it has almost nothing to do with his Christmas. It is a movie more about snow than Christmas.
• I am not including A Very Murray Christmas, even though I will watch it at least a dozen times in the next month, because it’s not really a movie.

10. Scrooged (1988). The most beautifully written and performed speech in the Christas movie canon.

9. The Santa Clause (1994). The sequels are unwatchable, but the original is both sardonic and sweet hearted.

8. Die Hard (1988). I have gone back and forth on the “is Die Hard a Christmas movie” debate but I think Michael Kamen’s use of Silent Night in the score solidifies its standing in the corpus. It is the best movie on this list, but only the eighth best Christmas movie.

7. Home Alone (1990) *

*Home Alone 2 should be consumed for ironic purposes only, but it SHOULD be consumed. I will have a full game preview section on Home Alone 2 before Christmas. 

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